


a century of darkness

by Rhiannon87



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Isolation, Sacrifice, tagging the sword as a character because it's the only other one who talks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 11:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11147724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhiannon87/pseuds/Rhiannon87
Summary: Link slept for a hundred years. Zelda had no such luxury.





	a century of darkness

 

Princess Zelda of Hyrule was seventeen years old when her life ended.

The Sheikah had taken Link to the Shrine of Resurrection, the only one they’d ever been able to activate, and she had returned the Master Sword to its place in Korok Forest. She understood what she had to do now. Alone, because of her failure. Because of her weakness, her inability to awaken her own birthright until it was almost too late.

She rode hard across the fields, heading ever onward towards the pillars of black smoke and flashes of sickly red light coming from Hyrule Castle. From her home. Ganon had taken nearly everything from her, but she would stop the Calamity before it took anything else.

Or she would die trying.

Zelda slid off her horse and removed the saddle and bridle with hands that shook only a little. “Go on,” she whispered, stroking her mount’s neck. “Go, and live.”

The horse didn’t move, too well-trained to abandon his rider. Zelda dropped the gear to the ground and shook her head. “Go!” she shouted, and the noise spooked him enough that he cantered off towards a distant hill. Zelda watched him go. Her last companion, gone. At least he would survive.

Then she turned and faced the castle, and began to walk.

The corrupted Guardians swarmed over the town, hunting down any survivors with ruthless, single-minded efficiency. They were beginning to fan outward, across Hyrule Field, their reddish glow clearly visible in the dim evening light. They would seek out every living soul in Hyrule and kill them. Unless Zelda stopped it all, here and now.

Her walk turned into a run, and around her, the air lit up like it was day. Light as bright as sunshine, pouring out from her, as if her power had grown more potent after being bottled up inside for so long. She ran past burning homes and crushed bodies in the streets. She ran, and the Guardians sputtered out lifelessly around her. She ran, and ran, and ran, until she reached the heart of the castle. The heart of the calamity. She ran straight into it, hands raised to channel her power, and she hoped that this would be the end.

In a way, it was. Her life ended in that moment. But Princess Zelda did not die.

Awareness returned slowly, in increments, and she had no idea how long passed between flickers of consciousness. Seconds, hours, days, there was no way to tell. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, and when she came back to herself long enough to  _ think _ , Zelda thought she was dead. She had died attacking Ganon, and this nothingness was the afterlife.

But it wasn’t quite nothingness. She could feel things, though her own body seemed strangely absent. Her own power was present, a sensation of force and pressure and warmth, radiant for all that she couldn’t see a thing. And there was this strange pulsing, like a heartbeat slowed down a hundred hundred times, so stretched out it took her ages to recognize it. Which she only did because it began to speed up. Not to the rate of a normal heartbeat, no, but faster.

The sealing power began to flare up, and Zelda realized what the heartbeat was. Ganon’s power, struggling to break free of her bonds.  _ No! You will not! You will not escape! _

There was a bright, blinding flash of light--and she  _ could _ see, it was true light--and for the briefest of moments Zelda saw Hyrule Castle, a shattered ruin before her, the town beyond a graveyard of blackened and collapsed buildings. Then the light vanished, taking her sight with it, and she cried out in silent, wordless frustration at the loss.

At least she knew it had worked. Ganon had been contained.

And that brief, tantalizing moment of sight… Zelda had been an amateur scholar, before her duty and failures had consumed her. Would have been a scientist, had she been granted the freedom and time. Well, now she had nothing but time. So she would examine and test and learn and understand.

It was not so easy as she had hoped. Keeping her thoughts organized was a challenge; it always had been, her mind racing through facts and lore and possibilities. That was why she’d kept so many notes, written in her journals. Writing things down made the thoughts solid and real, something she could hold onto. But in this existence, she had no such luxury. And her own expected struggles were compounded by long stretches of dissociation, where she remained awake but unaware, losing unknown lengths of time. And of course, there were the moments when Ganon struggled to break free, and Zelda had to turn all her focus and energy to containing him.

But she made progress nonetheless, slowly coming to understand her powers. The moment when she finally pushed beyond the eternal darkness and  _ saw _ , looking out into Hyrule for more than the barest instant, would have made her weep for joy if she had the ability. It was a beautiful night, the full moon turning Hyrule Field to a silver lake. And… in the distance, far far off, she could make out a glimmer of orange light. Fire or lantern or something else, she wasn’t sure. Not enough to tell if anyone was alive out there. Not enough to know if any of this had been worth it.

There were limits to her power, of course, and she dared not waste what she had staring beyond the castle. She could not risk Ganon escaping simply because she wanted to determine just how much a tree on a distant hill had grown since she saw it last.  _ How long has it been? How many months, how many years? How long will my power endure? _

Some time after learning to open her eyes, she gazed out into a world bathed in blood red light. It was a horror unlike anything she’d ever seen, and as she watched, clouds racing overhead in front of a blood moon, her vision shifted and pulled--

\--and she was suddenly at a dusty, skull-shaped cave, one whose walls bore the scratch marks and blood of recent battle. Particles of the sickly reddish-black that she’d come to associate with Ganon swirled in the air, solidifying into the familiar shapes of moblins and lizaflos. Her vision shifted again, to a riverbank that she almost recognized, to the ruins of a watchtower, and every time, the horrible beasts that had plagued Hyrule in the years before Ganon’s rise appeared as if out of nothing.

Then the red light faded, the moon returning to silver, and her vision snapped into darkness.

But for all the horror of what she had seen, she had learned. Learned of Ganon’s power, learned of the threats that still plagued Hyrule, and most importantly, learned that her sight was not bound to the castle. If she could figure out how to move it on her own…

The tree on the hill grew taller and the blood moon rose countless times before Zelda learned how to move her sight on her own. It exhausted more of her power, allowing her mere moments of sight before she had to withdraw into darkness again. But it was more freedom than she’d had in… in years, she had to admit. Perhaps decades. With no sense of her body and only limited glimpses of the world, she had lost all sense of time.

She was more concerned by her lack of fear over that fact than the fact itself.

She sent her vision to the Divine Beasts first, her heart breaking at the sight of them still and silent and so clearly corrupted. But nearby were the settlements of the Rito and Zora and Gerudo and Goron, places she had visited with Link and the other Champions, so long ago. And they lived. They  _ thrived _ . Even in Hylia, people continued to live out their lives, tending gardens and opening shops and raising children. They had simply adapted to the new way of things, to the moss-covered Guardians and the monsters roaming the land and the castle consumed by evil. This was the way of the world now, and they continued to live in it.

She had saved Hyrule. Her power hadn’t been enough to save her father or her friends or her home, but she’d saved her kingdom. Her people survived. That alone made her imprisonment worth it.

Zelda avoided anything to do with Link for longer than she should have. He had yet lived, when she’d laid the Master Sword to rest, but the Shrine of Resurrection… she and Purah and Robbie had worked out how to activate it, but they’d never learned of the inner workings. Never learned how it preserved and restored life, or even if that functionality remained intact after so long.

Or, as she feared, seeing the Guardians and Divine Beasts corrupted, if it too could fall prey to Ganon’s power. If she viewed the cave and saw it glowing with that terrible red light…

She’d always been curious, though, unwilling to leave a question unanswered for too long. And eventually, Zelda stretched her sight out to a small, unremarkable cave on the Great Plateau, and sought out her Champion.

After such buildup, the results were… almost a disappointment. The cave was filled with the blue and orange lights of all the ancient technology, and the Resurrection Chamber itself was sealed. But there was no sign of Link, no indication that it was really working.

She would simply have to have patience, and faith.

Time passed in long, formless stretches, her awareness fading until called back by Ganon’s latest attempt at freedom. She would survey Hyrule, from time to time, ensure that it survived, but from her removed vantage point, little changed. Children were born and aged and bore children of their own. The tree on the hill was felled, though she didn’t see how, and a small grove of trees sprouted in its place. And the Shrine remained, glowing steadily, and she had to believe that it was working as intended. It was the only thing she had left to believe in.

When change finally came, though, it was all the more terrifying.

The time between Ganon’s attempts at freedom seemed to be growing shorter, though her own sense of time was so fractured that she couldn’t be sure. But containing him was growing more and more difficult, requiring more and more of her power. Ganon was growing stronger, and Zelda knew in her heart that she was growing weaker.

The first time his power escaped, she  _ felt _ it, like slivers of pure sickness and malice dragged across her soul. She clamped down harder with what power she had left, locking him away, even as she knew it wouldn’t be enough. He would continue to fight and continue to escape, inch by inch, reclaiming his power while forcing her to burn up whatever was left of hers.

When she saw the Divine Beasts begin to move, she knew beyond any doubt that Hyrule was running out of time. She had not given into despair for all these long years, but now it threatened to consume her. All she had done, all she had lost, the sacrifice and pain and grief, it would all be for nothing, Ganon would break free and destroy everything and all would be lost--

_ Princess. _

She knew that voice. One of the very last voices she’d ever heard, before she’d flung herself into the Calamity. It was a voice like ringing steel, like a thousand knights letting out a war cry, like an echo across time. The Master Sword.

“I-I’m here,” she said. Or tried to say. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t tell if her words had reached across the distance to Korok Forest. Did distance even matter? “I’m here!”

_ Princess.  _ There was relief in the voice now, the echo sounding more like a sigh.  _ You live. It is time. _

“Time? For--For what?”

_ Time for the Hero to wake. Time for his trials, so he may reclaim me. Time for him to defeat Ganon. _ It paused for a moment, then added in a gentler tone,  _ Time for you to be free. _

Freedom. She could barely remember what it felt like, to walk through the fields, to eat a well-cooked meal, to let the wind tangle in her hair. To speak with her voice and see with her own eyes. It had been so, so long... 

“What must I do?”

_ Call to him, and he will hear. You are bound to each other, the Princess and the Hero. He will always hear you. _

Zelda found herself wishing, desperately, she could weep. Link was ready to return, at long last. She wouldn’t have to face it alone anymore.

She turned her gaze back to the cave, sent up a prayer to the Goddess, and spoke.

“Link. Open your eyes. Link…” 


End file.
